


For the New Age

by Kittendiamore



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 08:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15263580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittendiamore/pseuds/Kittendiamore
Summary: “The Prince has been charged with treason. It looks as if he will either be found and killed, or face trial and…”“Executed,” Ancel says. He’s no longer smiling. They both know what this means.“It’s time for you to,” Berenger pauses, “move on.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written on tumblr @Nikanndros awhile ago. This is pretty much just a series of loosely connected canon era ficlets about Ancel and Berenger. Title from National Anthem by Lana Del Rey.

Berenger touches the paper in his hand to the fire, lets the letter burn before his eyes. Even now, he has no regrets - the choices he made were right, no matter how it ends for him. Perhaps Ancel could be a regret, letting him return to Varenne, but Berenger has long stopped pretending he has a choice where it comes to Ancel.

“What is it?” Ancel asks, and Berenger hisses, the flames touching his fingertips. He drops the smouldering paper in his goblet.

“Where have you been?”

Ancel tilts his head, his hair falling aside to reveal a new earring, gold chains dangling almost to his shoulder. “Do you like it?”

Not really. But Ancel makes a picture, covered in jewels and layer after layer of furs and silks. In-congruently, and endearingly, his feet are bare.

“Yes,” Berenger says, meaning _I like you_ rather than the earring. He wants to remember Ancel like this, confident and smiling, looking brighter than any man has a right to be. “I received a letter.”

Ancel’s eyes flicker to the goblet. “Did it disagree with you?”

Berenger breathes. “The Prince has been charged with treason. It looks as if he will either be found and killed, or face trial and…”

“Executed,” Ancel says. He’s no longer smiling. They both know what this means.

“It’s time for you to,” Berenger pauses, “move on.”

Ancel’s gaze is stony. “I want to handle all my offers personally. I don’t want you accepting someone sub-par just to get rid of me.”

_I don’t want to get rid of you_ , he wants to say. “Yes,” he says instead. “Of course.”

-

Nothing much changes after that. Ancel still hangs onto his arms and charms every lord he meets, but he makes no mention of any offers or seems inclined to accept any bouts in the ring with other pets to show off. He can’t seem desperate for a new contract, probably, or it’ll lower the price.

“You must tell me,” Lord Durand says, at one event, “how you can afford that pet. I made him an offer and he laughed!”

Berenger frowns. Lord Durand owns some of the most prosperous jewel mines, and is a fervent supporter of the Regent. He should be the ideal choice for Ancel. “What was the offer?”

Lord Durand says a number, easily more than what Berenger pays. Berenger looks across the hall, where Ancel is in the midst of several nobles. He’s tossing his hair and laughing attractively. When Ancel laughs genuinely, Berenger knows, it’s a loud, uneven sound. It’s also gorgeous at how embarrassed Ancel gets when he makes such a sound.

“What’s it going to take?” Durand insists.

“I’ll talk to Ancel,” he replies.

-

“When I agreed to let you entertain your own offers,” Berenger says, “it was with the assumption that you intended to accept one.”

“I’m waiting for a good one,” Ancel says. He steps forward to unlace Berenger’s jacket, but gets pushed away.

“Lord Durand.”

Ancel puts his hands down. Takes a breath. “The Prince could still win. He’s-”

“Ancel!”

“No, listen to me, he has an army! He’s with the Prince-Killer. He could - You know how unreliable gossip can be. It might not be as dire as it sounds.”

“If I am stripped of my lands, if I am executed as a traitor, it will be chaos,” he says, sternly, pleadingly. "No one will look at you kindly for associating with me.”

“I’ll endure it,” Ancel says. “I’ll turn it to my advantage. I’ll find - I can…I can’t leave you.”

“You must,” Berenger says.

Ancel steps right up to him, furious. “No. You don’t want me to leave either. Stop pushing me away. Stop pretending to know what I want, what I need.” Ancel grabs him by the lapels and looks up at him.

Still. “If anything happens to you-”

“You don’t get to die for your loyalty,” Ancel says, “and forbid me from making the same decision for you.”

“There are other-”

“I don’t want them. I want you. Only you.”

“Ancel,” Berenger says. Surrenders.

Ancel puts his arms around his neck, bracelets digging hard into Berenger’s shoulders. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’ll all work out. I haven’t come this far to stop getting what I want. Just tell me to stay.”

“If anything-”

“No. Tell me to stay.”

Berenger breaths. “Stay.“


	2. Chapter 2

Everything that could be done, has been done. Ancel has spent the last months befriending townspeople and preparing blackmail against various nobles. He’s bribed, flattered, and straight up threatened people to prepare for this. This moment - the morning when the riders will come with news of Prince Laurent’s execution, of their new king the former regent.

“We should get up,” Berenger says, but he makes no motion to move. Ancel made him promise that he would be in charge of what could be their last few hours together.

He desperately hopes it won’t be. When the Regent King comes for traitors, Ancel hopes he’s curried enough good favour for Berenger that he’ll be excused. Maybe he’ll lose his lands, but that’s a small price to pay to keep his life. It’s funny how priorities can change, Ancel thinks.

“No,” he says, and: “Kiss me.”

Berenger does. Kissing Berenger is dangerous because he makes the action feel something like love.

-

The riders still haven’t arrived by mid-morning. Surely, Laurent is long dead by now - his head hung upon the gates at Ios.

They go to the stables. Berenger watches with somber affection while Ancel braids his horse’s - Ruby’s - mane. Ruby and he had found a new affinity for each other when Ancel had realised all the lovely ribbons that he could decorate her with. Now when they go out for rides, Ancel and his horse are both beautifully adorned.

Ancel finishes the braid and then, because he has to do this, he turns away from his lover. It’s too vulnerable to say what he wants to say and also be seen.

“Berenger,” he says.

“It’s okay,” Berenger says, forever patient and steady and kind. “You have to go. I know.”

Ancel takes a breath. He hates all these emotions that Berenger has slowly brought to life inside him. Sometimes he longs for the days that he could coldly move from bed to bed - what’s the difference when you’re still getting fucked? - but that’s also a lie, because now that he’s had this, he can’t go back.

“I will survive this,” he says. “No matter what it takes, I’ve always done whatever I could to live. We might have to seperate. I’ll have to go be someone else’s pet.”

“I know,” Berenger says again.

“I want you to know that…that if I could choose, if I had the luxury of choice - it would be you, every time.”

There’s a long pause. “Will you look at me?”

“I can’t. Not until I say it,” he says. “I haven’t said it before, you know? Not even pretending to masters. I don’t think anyone has said it to me, either.” His mother maybe, he likes to believe she cared for him before she died or gave him away or whatever it was that happened to leave him alone in the world.

“Ancel.” He sounds pained.

It’s better to just say it, he thinks. “I love you.”

Hands press onto his shoulders, and Ancel immediately surrenders. He closes his eyes and falls back into a broad chest, lets Berenger support his weight.

“I always thought it was a fairytale fabrication, or a joke,” Ancel whispers, “when people would talk of love. Or maybe it was something reserved for people higher born than me. And then I met you.”

Berenger’s arms tighten around him. “I wasn’t prepared for you,” Berenger replies. “I wish we could stay here, like this, forever.” He presses a kiss into Ancel’s hair. “You have my heart; you are my heart.”

They stay like that, leaning in, chest to back, for an endless amount of time. Then, they fall away from each other to leave the stables. Ancel regrets not trying to kiss him one last time: they won’t be able to express affection before witnesses now that they’re at the end of their journey. Ancel wishes they could clasp hands, at least. It’s odd to feel starved of a touch that was his only moments ago.

They get to the front of Berenger’s estate just in time to spot the rider in the distance. It’s late enough that it must have been quite a trial. They watch the messenger get closer and closer, turning from a sunlit blur into an actual person with discernible features.

Ancel looks down, shocked, when Berenger takes his hand, their fingers interlocking. When he finally moves his eyes back to the rider, he sees what his lover must have seen. The rider is wearing blue.


	3. Chapter 3

Berenger sits in the dim candlelight, pouring over boring documents that were of little consequence to Ancel. That won’t do, Ancel thinks, bare feet padding against the frightfully plain tiles (no mosaics to speak of!). Before Berenger can even look up at him, Ancel is pushing away the notes and gracefully moving to straddle his lover’s lap.

Berenger is a man of simple tastes, but Ancel can appreciate his desk chair - sturdy and large enough for Ancel to sit like this.

“Pay attention to me,” Ancel says. “I’m more interesting than those stupid papers.”

“I see that,” Berenger replies, looking amused. His handsome jawline is even more pleasing in the intimate lighting. Ancel presses a kiss to it.

“I miss you,” he says.

Years ago, he would have never imagined himself saying something so embarrassing. It’s too vulnerable, but there’s something about Berenger that makes little things like this feel alright. Their latest contract ran out two months ago but neither of them have brought it up. They don’t need the paper to tell them what they already know. Ancel has never felt so recklessly safe.

“I’m right here,” Berenger says. His voice is as warm, as reliable, as a fireplace. Ancel wants to make his home in the affectionate tones.

“Prove it.”

Berenger kisses him with all the singleminded passion that still lights Ancel up like nothing else. It isn’t long before Ancel is pushing up against him, insistent and driven by emotion. Since their first night together, Ancel has learned that this is something entirely different to sex. What they have, what they do - he desires it with the same joy that he’d felt the first time a crowd had raucously applauded his fire twirling.

-

“Was that enough attention?” he asks, hours later in bed.

They regain their breath together in the moonlight, candles long since burned out.

“Never,” Ancel replies. “You’ll have to work a lifetime to make up for leaving me to wake up alone.”

“A whole twelve hours without me,” says Berenger. “You’ve been terrible neglected.”

“Was your meeting profitable?”

“It looks promising,” he replies.

“Good,” Ancel says. “As long as you didn’t cruelly abandon me for nothing.”

“Cruelly,” he repeats, turning to wrap his arms around Ancel. “Did you like your gift at least?”

He’d awoken to a cold bed, but in his lover’s place had been a ring. It was gold and slim, like a lady’s, with a beautifully cut emerald set into it. Ancel smiles and taps the hand wearing it against Berenger’s chest.

“Almost a worthy replacement for what I wanted to wake up to, I suppose.”

Berenger kisses his forehead, undeterred by the sweat that has to be edging his hairline from their activities.

They’re silent for a long moment, breathing together. Ancel traces patterns into Berenger’s chest.

“What’s that?”

“Your name,” Ancel replies. His fingers draw the letters more pronounced so that he can feel them. B-E-R-E-N-G-E-R.

It was difficult work learning his letters, but he’s willing to suffer for love. Last month he got his third favourite jacket dirty planting white flowers in their gardens, as a surprise for Berenger. (“Why didn’t you just take the jacket off?” Berenger had asked, doing exactly that for him.

Ancel had given him a scandalised look. “I refuse to have someone mistake me for a gardener.”)

“Very good,” Berenger sounds pleased.

“It’s arduous learning,” he says. “And boring. I may need encouragement to continue.”

“A jewel for every letter?”

“How materialistic of you,” Ancel replies. His hair is slightly disturbed by Berenger’s breath of laughter. “I could be convinced to accept kisses for motivation.”

“Those,” and at this, Berenger rolls them, so that he’s perched over Ancel with such open affection in his eyes that Ancel wants to cry, “come free.”

He leans down to pepper Ancel’s face with kisses as emphasis. Ancel can’t help it- he laughs, too full of emotion.

“I want that in a contract,” he says.

“Anything you want.” Berenger drops, half his body on top of Ancel - and it’s a weight he adores.

“In Akielos,” Berenger tells him, lips against Ancel’s ear, “they don’t have contracts like ours.”

They don’t have contracts at all, Ancel thinks, now that slaves are a thing of the past. Perhaps pets will become the fashion there with the unison of the kingdoms. Ancel doesn’t really care either way.

“They have,” Berenger continues and then pauses, oddly hesitant.

“What?” Ancel prompts.

Pressed together as they are, Ancel can feel his lover’s pulse quicken as if it’s his own.

“A different kind of contract,” he says. “Marriage contracts. Between men.”

Ancel says nothing. He’s suddenly unsure whose heart it is that’s beating rapidly.

Berenger breathes and then keeps talking. “The law here is being changed to match. So that the kings can…”

Unite their kingdoms in every possible way. “What about,” Ancel swallows, “children?”

“Adoption, perhaps. There are many orphans out there.”

“And that’s an option? Ending the bloodlines.”

“Blood doesn’t ensure love, or goodness,” Berenger replies carefully. “I would wager that’s more important.”

“You don’t wager at all,” Ancel says. Berenger has no vices - unless collecting Ancel’s smiles counts.

“What do you think?”

“I think,” Ancel says, slowly, “that it’s risky. A permanent contract.”

“Between equals,” Berenger adds. “Each promised to the other.”

Ancel smiles. It’s a slow thing that escalates until he’s grinning. “I like risks.”


End file.
